Mind, Don't Matter
by Shadowflame611
Summary: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don't mind, and those that mind, don't matter." –Dr. Seuss


Inspried by the Dr. Suess quote below.

Just a quick oneshot-drabble thing, a short scene between April and Don I wrote a while back. Its kindofnotreally written in my usual uh, style. I was going to make a more complete story out of it, but eh.. its better the way it is. Plus, April's kindof out-of-character in this. Not making too much sense, aaand kindof sappy. :p

Humm, there's some mild use of language here.

Don/April along with the rest of the TMNT are not mine. Credit to Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. TMNT registered trademarks of Mirage Studios.

Enjoyy!

**Mind, Don't Matter**  
_  
__"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don't mind, and those that mind, don't matter." –Dr. Seuss_

There was an anger, there; a kind of suppressed fury that haunted his features from time to time. The kind of anger that's prevalent in Raph's temper, in Leonardo's constant training. In Mike's need to reap smiles from his brother's otherwise grim faces.

I knew I had done something wrong as soon as I saw his shoulders tense. He hadn't been facing me to begin with; sitting at the kitchen table, he held the toaster in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. He had paused for a moment, a slight break in the turning of the hand-held tool, before he continued on with what he was doing.

He wasn't angry with me, that much I knew. None of them were, really. The only one who really had that ability was Raph, and with him the red haze was always an inadvertent thing. He intended to take his pain out on me about as much as he intended to take it out on his brothers.

"April," He finally said with a sigh, "what is it that makes beauty?"

I had a feeling that he would turn down my embarrassingly generic answer, but I tried anyway. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. People make their own beauty- or at least, they have their own definitions of it."

A pause. "And how can you define beauty if it isn't supposed to exist?"

I knew where he was going, and I felt a familiar dropping sensation at the hidden meaning of his words. I'm a monster, April.

"Who has the right to determine what is or isn't supposed to exist?" I tried to keep my voice level as I spoke. He turned, allowing me the slight satisfaction of being able to see his face. To have a chance at reading him.

To my displeasure, however, he kept his face decidedly blank as he answered. "There are two components of sentient life as we know it that allow the ultimate continuity of a species' existence." He was hiding his small, fragile frame behind all of those strong, lengthy words. "In humans, it is the presence of two genders that determines survival. Beauty in nature is determined by color, strength. People, on the other hand, look at the opposite gender in a different way; facial features, muscle tone-"

"-And, because there is no opposite gender for your species, you think that there's no such thing as a handsome ninja turtle. Am I right?"

"There's no one to see that beauty."

I paused, running my initial comeback through my head before speaking. _Yeah, well, **I** do._ I knew how he felt about me. Call it love, or a simple teenage crush, but it was still there. The last thing I wanted was to make him think more than he already does on the subject; not to say that I wanted to kill his hopes, but it wasn't fair to him.

Then again, an extremely guilty part of me often insisted that the fair thing to do would be to kill his hopes.

I am Casey's girl, and Casey's alone. For Don, I have no affections that stretch beyond siblinghood. Rather than tell him verbally (something that I suspect he'd enjoy talking about just as much as he did our current conversation), I've resigned to making it plain that I don't return the feelings. With that resignation, I have also made a promise to myself to make him realize that it was based on my heart saw. Not my eyes.

His gaze suddenly turned stony as he read my expression. "Don't tell me I'm wrong. I've had years to mull it over. You've had… what, a few months?"

"Three years."

"Three out of nineteen."

I allowed a slight frown to crease my brow. Having watched the way Don reacted to this type of uncomfortable pressure before, I was well rehearsed in his tactics. Cornered, he was beginning to try to fend me off with clipped answers. But I had my tactics, too.

"Do you remember what I said to you on the first day that we met?"

A pause. "No, but I remember that you fainted."

"Ouch." And I meant that; the remark went right through me.

No doubt he saw the hurt flash through me, because he turned around in his chair to face the table. At first I thought he was guilty, but then he spoke again, tone carrying a subtle scoff. "Tell me about it."

He thought he had won, I realized. He was sealing the envelope with that last comment. One would think that he of all people would know better than to try to make short work of a conversation like this, especially with me.

...Then again, one would also think Don wouldn't go straight for the sore spots. Despite the fact that I could recognize his pain, even if I didn't understand why he was reacting this way to my small joke, I still felt a flash of my own anger.

"Remind me who I'm talking to again?"

"A mutant ninja turtle." The term sounded like a curse when he said it like that.

"My brother, Donatello." I shot back, deciding to verbally acknowledge his previous comments, "Who I thought was beyond the childish game of hit and run."

"This is a sensitive subject, April."

"Sensitive like, filling you in on my own life before I found you guys?" Two could play the unfair game.

"No," His gentle voice suddenly took on a sharp, aggravated edge. "Sensitive like, it revolves around my very existence, or lack thereof." He was quiet for a moment, tilting his head to get a better look at whatever the heck was wrong with the toaster's insides, before speaking, calm again, "We've already talked about this sort of thing before, anyway."

"We briefly touched on the scientific hypothesis when you explained to me how you thought you came to be." The words sounded jumbled and confused when they came out. In my head, which was racing with the angry tenor of my thoughts, they sounded a million times clearer.

"Isn't that enough?"

"Talk to me about this, Don."

He put down the screwdriver, turned the toaster so that crumbs spilled on his lap and stuck a finger in to where the bread goes. "You can't just make an assumption and run with it?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I'd rather you told me. I'm just a little sick and tired of tiptoeing around the subject. I'm even more sick of the freakin' looks that I get when I step out of line."

He didn't seem at all fazed by my rising temper. "We don't mean it like that. It's just…awkward."

"Because I'm human."

From behind, I could see his throat muscles twitch convulsively as he swallowed. Not as composed as he was trying to put off, he didn't want to have to look at me. I couldn't tell, though, if he was angry or embarrassed or something else. "Yes, April. Because you're a human."

"And you guys are mutants. And I suppose that its okay for you to step out of this invisible line because you created it, 'cause you're the minorities, here. You "trust" me, and yet talking about this is taboo. How come?"

As I said this, I waved my arms, voice wavering as I paced back to the door frame. Away from him. When I turned around, he had turned in his seat, facing me once again, wearing the guilty expression of a man cornered by a woman's tears. Strange thing is, I hadn't been crying until he looked at me like that. Maybe he knew me enough to predict where I was going, to feel the torrential whirlwind of thoughts that assaulted me.

Damn my womanly sense of compassion. Damn it to hell.

I stared at him hard through the annoying film that obscured my vision. "You don't think I care, do you?"

His adam's apple bobbed once, but otherwise he remained still, staring at me. "No, April, that's not it—"

"Since I don't understand, I don't care. Since I fainted once – once, mind you, because I never, ever reacted that way again; to you, I'm just another human who couldn't possibly view you for anything other than a monster." Cha-ching, the words hit home. Perhaps I hadn't needed to stress the word for him to drop his gaze like that. "I can't love you as the family that you are; because I'm a human and you're not, I automatically have to hate you. I hate you because you look like a… some creature from my childhood nightmares."

I paused, glaring, before continuing in the same screeching tempo, pointing a finger at his astonished face as I stressed each syllable. "I hate you just as I hate black people because, when they freed the slaves, they took with them my family's main profit and made us poor for generations. I hate Asians, because it was their martial arts- ninjitsu especially- that caused me ninety percent of the physical and emotional pain that I've ever felt in my entire life."

Initial rush of anger expelled, I stood there for several moments, gulping air as I made a half-assed attempt at composing myself. He stared at me, jaw set, the thick muscles around his neck tight, strained. Silent and motionless and- what the hell kind of emotion was that on his face, anyway?

My short-lived anger dissolved as I realized that, whatever it was, I had probably done even more damage. Wonderful. What a bitch, April. What a (apparently racist) bitch.

Sniffling, I ran a hand back through my stringy hair before continuing in a wavering voice. "But do you know what I really, truly, honestly hate?"

Don didn't move. Through my own haze, I could see a glaze start to gather on his hazel eyes, shining brightly in the stove's overhead light.

"I hate it when people look at me and only see a pretty little middle-class white girl and assume, just because maybe that's the way their neighbor or boss or landlord is." I still wasn't making much sense, and that bothered me. He seemed to be understanding, though. "But even then, knowing how people are, how they judge me, I don't care. Because I'm not like that- I work hard to not fit into any of those categories, because life – looking at and watching people- has taught me not to judge someone based on their skin, their ethnicity and looks. I've seen what that kind of thing does. I see the anger and hate it creates. People only get hurt when they act like that, and really, that sort of thing only makes things worse…"

Alright, so I had no idea where I was going with this. Maybe he didn't really understand me after all; maybe he was looking at me in confusion instead of stark attention.

"Look, Don… Nevermind. I get it. I'm sorry, really. Forget I asked. Its not like you guys don't have a right to be like that, what with all the crud you've had to put up with. You're right. My species… we're disgusting. We can't even keep ourselves from treating each other like crap."

I had wanted him to relax, even if slightly, just to let me know that I hadn't effed up that badly. But he didn't. He didn't move at all.

Uncomfortable under his stare, I shifted on my feet. If he was trying to instill even more guilt in me, then it was working. We stood like this for several seconds, during which I met and then broke his gaze three or four times.

When I looked up for the fifth time, I was relieved to see that he wasn't looking at me. Leaning on the back of the chair, he had tilted his head completely downward to face the floor. Suddenly needing to break the silence, I opened my mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by his voice, quiet and startlingly feeble.

"I shouldn't have mentioned your fainting."

"You were angry," I said, more out of the need to fix the damage that I had done than polite forgiveness. The fact that it was a true statement helped as well.

"We all are; always have been. Doesn't excuse it. And you're right; we shouldn't treat you that way just because you're human."

"But-"

"You're part of our family, now; we shouldn't subject you to that type of awkwardness. You've more than proven to us that you're not like the humans we've been brought up to fear." He swallowed hard, like he had before. Though now it seemed to be for a different reason.

"You guys don't think that I think of you as monsters. I know that, Don. I wasn't thinking. Its all just …" I trailed off, watching the line of his mouth curve more and more downward with every word that I spoke. "Right?"

"Most of the time." I was uncomfortable with the honesty, with his own sudden frailty, and yet at the same time I couldn't help but marvel at the perfection of it all. He was incredibly strong to be able to control himself as to not expose these thoughts, to be empathetic and gentle to others without bothering them with his own inner demons. Then again, maybe it was just like that with me, and the Guys just shared some sort of mutual understanding about this sort of thing. "I… sometimes, Raph voices it. It's probably all just paranoia. Idiotic, selfish paranoia."

"Sometimes, he says that I'm disgusted by you?" I suppose I already knew that.

"Not necessarily. He implies that you feel things that are… close to disgust." He suddenly leaned forward. His next words came out in a rush as he jumped to defend his brother. "But be doesn't mean it, in the long run. It's just frustration." I knew that, too. I paused as I considered what I was going to say next.

"And how do you feel?"

Hesitation. A deep breath, let out through his teeth. Wrinkled his forehead into a frown, and shook his head.

I waited patiently, letting silence prompt him into explanation. "No, I don't think that you're like that at all, April. Its just…" Break off, find the words, and start again, "I don't get it sometimes."

I knew exactly where this was going. And yet, despite his obvious embarrassment, I couldn't help myself, selfish girl I am. "Don't get what?"

"Why," He forced out, "you don't feel that way."

The voice-tremor was infectious; it seemed to be taking a hold of him, now. Once again pushing away from the doorframe, I walked in his direction- approaching him, this time. Reaching out, I brought my hand up to touch his face.

"Because you, Don, and your brothers, in all of your strength, love, and kindness, are beautiful to me." At my words, I watched at his eyes clamped suddenly shut, felt his heavy jaw clench. "You're the family that I always wanted, and spent years moving around and searching for. You four are my little brothers- I love you, just as deeply and completely as I would my own flesh and blood, if I had any."

"Brother." He choked on the phrase as it came out.

I understood the hidden meaning behind this word, too. "Yes. My brother."

"And my pain is your pain."

I sighed, suddenly feeling my throat constrict for the second time that night. However, this time, the anger was less directed at him. "I'm sorry, Don."

He moved as though through molasses. Opening his eyes, he finally looked at me, then, slowly, reached up with one hand and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. "I am, too."

Then, with absolute gentleness, he ran the pad of his calloused thumb across my cheek, intercepting a tear. "For doing this to you, I mean. I shouldn't have gotten angry." A failed attempt at that crooked smile of his, "Its just been a bad day."

Without another word, he stood and left the room. In the silence of the lair, I could hear him as slid the door to his bedroom shut with slightly more force than needed.

In the last moments before I broke down, I could only stare at the depression of my little brother's shell in the old computer chair, feeling wretched for ruining his previous mood.

What a bitch, April.


End file.
